The Golden Hour
by WaveGoodbye
Summary: Quinn Fabray has always struggled to say goodbye to her demons, so how does a slap to Rachel Berry's face kick start a chain of events leading up to that? One-shot.


**Disclaimer:** Unfortunately the characters do not belong to me, I'm just borrowing them for fun.  
**Author's Note: **This is just me attempting to move all of my completed Faberry work over from LJ so that it's easier for people to read. I haven't written all of these recently (I would have died from feelings, okay?)

* * *

You never did learn how to say goodbye to anything.

You didn't even say goodbye to the way you used to look. All those flaws that made your face flush a harsh shade of shame when your classmates would point them out and cash in on the insults like they were some form of currency was enough to make you cry yourself to sleep at night. And while they were cashing in, having fun at parties you were never invited to, it was enough to make you feel so much pain inside that you didn't want to be there anymore. You'd never take your own life, so you decided to change it. You let an unfamiliar man with a piece of paper authorised by the American Board of Plastic Surgery hammer away at your face to make it beautiful to society's standards. It was disgustingly ironic, you thought once, a split second before a mask was placed over your face and you were asked to count to ten. You never did make it past five.

Four years later and you still hadn't said goodbye to those looks. Maybe it was because you were desperately unhappy and unfulfilled with the social hierarchy you were still grappling for. It didn't make sense. You were stunning, everyone always said so; even the people who were afraid of you. Especially the people who were afraid of you. Maybe it was because you still saw her in the mirror sometimes, appearing slowly like fog. You always tried to wash it away, but the thing about smeared fog on a mirror is that it always leaves a stain.

Your father wasn't worth a goodbye when he ordered you out of his house.

You didn't say goodbye when you carefully lowered your baby into the hospital crib for the last time. You felt a part of you die inside but you didn't say goodbye. Instead, you kissed her soft little face and pressed your mouth against her ear, telling her you'd see her soon; silently, because it always hurt too much to say painful things out loud and you didn't like the way it made your voice break. It was a lie, but you hoped she would still remember and believe when she was your age. You hoped she wouldn't be disillusioned the way you are.

You didn't say goodbye to Finn or Sam. You kissed Puck a few minutes after you left the hospital, when both of you were sitting in his car. You were both numb with a different kind of pain but you remembered the feel of his lips. It wasn't a passionate kiss. It wasn't more than acknowledging you'll never forget each other. You wouldn't think about it again for a long time. The sex and the bad attempt at a relationship never meant the world to either of you but he wanted to do right by you and your daughter in the end, and that counted for something.

You didn't say goodbye to the callous girl who's had partial control of your mind and body for four years when your hand made harsh contact with Rachel Berry's face. You don't know if that was because you weren't willing to bet your life that it wasn't you who had done it. You think the line separating who you are and who you pretend to be blurs more often than not. Sometimes you spend a lot of your time convincing yourself that you're not her deep down, that you do it just to keep your head above the water.

But somehow you end up with a mouthful of water anyway.

It happened in a split second. You didn't think about it to change your mind. If you had taken more than a second to realise what you were about to do, the chain of events would have happened differently. You hope. Occasionally, in the stillness of night, you concede that there aren't many differences between you and the least popular girl in school. You generalise and think it's the same for every version of you and Rachel Berry in America.

You felt every single side to you apologise to Rachel in the second that followed, even the broken side. After everything you've done to Rachel, the way she looked at you; with a startling element of disbelief, was enough to ground the walls you had up. After everything and she still hadn't given up on a good side to you that she longed to be friends with. Underneath it all, there was a part of you that yearned for her friendship too. You thought about it sometimes; how she'd probably be the kind of best friend where the lines blurred together. You've spent a lot of time with Brittany and Santana and you've never really had any close friends before, so you think you'd be confused at where the line between friendship ended and more began.

Rachel didn't leave after you struck her. She stayed and you ended up saying something that had been festering inside for years. Your voice cracked as you said it but you weren't as ashamed as you thought you'd be. It was almost like relief. The twisted part of you thought it was because you were giving Rachel Berry your issues and you enjoyed that. The good side wasn't so sure.

You let her wipe away the remnants of mascara marring the delicate skin underneath your eyes. Your image was preserved with Rachel's help —something you've never let anyone else close to in your life unless they were a plastic surgeon. But you didn't resent Rachel in that moment, you weren't scared of her. You felt something you'd never felt before: safe; taken care of; stronger for breaking.

You were about to lean forward for an awkward hug but a random girl walked in and directed an uncomfortable glance between the two of you, so you left. Rachel wanted you to go back to the party to show everyone that you didn't need their approval or acceptance. It seemed like the right thing to do, so you agreed with one condition: that she stayed with you.

She smiled at you in the gym and it felt like she was smiling at every version of you. It brought out the best in you. You haven't felt as liberated as that in a long time, certainly not without hurting someone in the process. Your Prom picture was just you. And in the fraction of a second that the flash went off, there was only one version of Quinn Fabray smiling back.

It didn't last long.

It was less than an hour later when you were alone, slowly walking the path of your driveway with stones digging into your bare feet. You were quiet going inside the house, disinclined to see your mother's face. It was just as well that she was in the living room with two bottles of wine, caught up in photo albums with photographs no more than four years old. You looked perfect in every one of them. There was a space at the back for your Prom Queen photo. It had been reserved for a long time.

It would stay empty for at least another year.

You couldn't stand your bedroom. Compared to the way you'd felt sitting there four hours ago to now, it was almost like part of you had died in there. You just weren't sure which part that was. Regardless, it was haunting. The atmosphere stuck to your skin and made it itch.

It made you so antsy that you picked up your phone and dialled a number you hadn't used in forever.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asked as you both crept inside her bedroom. Her voice was hushed not to wake up her fathers.

You nodded but she knew you were lying. Rachel sat down on the edge of her bed and left a space next to her. When you studied her eyes it was clear that she expected you to sit next to her.

When you did she held your hand.

"Why are you here?" Rachel tried again.

"I don't know," you said.

"Do you want me to call anyone to be here?"

You shook your head and you couldn't see her face because your eyes were on the strip of carpet in front of her bedroom door, trying to gauge if her fathers had been woken up at all. There were no shadows yet. It made you wonder what they'd say to you if they found you in their daughter's bedroom after slapping her. If they even knew about it. You couldn't bring yourself to ask.

"Quinn," Rachel prompted gently. "Look at me."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I can still see it." The red mark that had long faded from Rachel's skin was still right there for you. It made you sick to your stomach. You'd been ashamed of yourself so many times but nothing seemed to compare to how you felt looking at the evidence of your temper.

"It's gone," Rachel said.

"It's here," you said, finally looking at her. Your raised your hand to her again and you noticed that she didn't flinch once. This time, however, your touch was feather-light and careful. The backs of your fingers grazed the reddened skin of her cheek like they were trying to heal it. "I'm so sorry," you said again.

Rachel's hand was against yours now, turning it over so that you were cupping her face. She applied pressure like it didn't hurt at all. "It's gone," she said again, this time more firmly. "It's okay."

The words sunk underneath your skin as intended but they found a way back out, just in time. You almost believed her.

"Come here," she said softly, like she knew what was going through your head better than you did.

It made you cry faster than anything.

She was holding you almost as quickly.

It felt like you were a body filled with broken bones and useless limbs that Rachel was desperately trying to put back together. But they weren't because your arms went around her too, and you were so surprised by how fragile she felt in your arms in return.

You know why Finn can't let her go. It's not hard to understand anymore.

Neither of you were still wearing your dresses. You were both in casual attire. Your makeup had been removed almost as soon as you'd gotten home.

You were replaying her earlier words over and over again inside your head. "Look, you have nothing to worry about. You're a very pretty girl, Quinn, prettiest girl I've ever met, but you're a lot more than that."

At one point it felt like your bodies melded together. You fit together like a puzzle piece.

You'd always been so jealous of her. She had everything you yearned for and she hadn't had to try a fraction as hard as you had to make that happen. You knew she would be a household name before long, and for a second, you were happy for her. You wanted her to be happy, to feel as though every bad day in high school would eventually be worth it, that she'd forget the names of the people who tried their hardest to make her feel worthless; even you. Especially you.

To you, it seemed that Rachel had always possessed the ticket out of there and you would always be the one left in the fire, unable to do anything but lie down and be engulfed in the flames of your mistakes.

You weren't so bitter about that anymore. It had been such a long time coming.

She wanted to be your friend, so you let her hold you. You wanted to be hers, so you held her too. It was a recipe for disaster, Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray being friends, but it was unclear which side that disaster would be on. You wonder how it would affect you, not how difficult it would be to be nice to her. If you're honest, being nice —or at least not being mean was easier than the effort it took to maintain the facade to belittle and emotionally torture.

Rachel pulled back but still had her arm around you while the other hand brushed your hair from around your face. She could see you clearly and it made you think that she thought you had seasons. You'd been stuck in winter for so long but it was like the way you'd held her and cried had brought you forward to spring, and she looked at you like you were on the cusp of summer.

You thought she'd be waiting a long time for that.

"I'm sorry," you said again, for everything.

"I'm sorry, too."

You leaned in and kissed her cheek with your eyes open. The mark wasn't as prominent as before. It had faded. Her skin was soft under your lips; its fragility and the ability to bruise reminded you of a peach.

To outsiders you thought it seemed that you and Rachel were always you and her; parallel lines, and never an us. And maybe that wasn't so far from the truth but you couldn't help to acknowledge that she was always beside you, as you were to her, and that was practically the same thing.

That was enough, you thought. For the most part. But for just a second you yearned to be joined with her, so you looked into her eyes, joined with an unguarded declaration of submission; held her face, joined by the skin, and pressed your lips against hers, joined by the heart.

Your eyes closed and you drank everything in. You wouldn't be aware of anything other than the feel of Rachel's mouth against your own but your body slackened like it had shed a burdened weight. She kissed you back unsurely, with just as much zeal as you gave to her. Nothing more, nothing less.

It felt like the golden hour after six months of darkness.

You never did learn how to say goodbye to anything. You were scared what would happen when you found and bid goodbye to the parts of you that had been hidden for so long. You didn't know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. You were unsure what would actually be left when all was said and done.

Parts of you were imbedded everywhere; bad memories pushed away to a corner of your mind; Beth's photograph and hospital bracelet hidden away in a box in your closet; the contact number for your father that you still kept on your phone; the image of the old you still staring back in the mirror. Parts of you were even implanted in Rachel from each time you'd hurled a string of insults her way.

You couldn't let them go, and so if you didn't say goodbye then they weren't gone, they were still close to you. You could always change them if they were still there like problems unsolved. You still had all the control, all you had to do was pick it back up.

But it was like a jungle of goodbyes inside your head now. A never-ending amount of corners you could hide in. And because of that, no matter how hard you tried to hide or be found you kept getting lost somewhere along the way.

Rachel opened her eyes first. She was looking at you when you finally dared to look at her. She looked confused but satisfied, like it wasn't so abnormal for your lips to touch. You wondered if she'd thought about it before.

The red mark on her cheek wasn't there anymore.

And just like that, she'd plucked one problem from the fray inside your head and managed to keep it out. The sight of Rachel's clear skin burned into the backs of your eyes and stayed there.

"Okay?" Rachel asked hesitantly, like a hug and a kiss was all you needed to feel better.

And for now, it was. You needed to be needed without feeling obliged to give anything back in return. You needed to feel secure with arms around you, not imprisoned.

You need to listen to a sea of words and sink so that you'll eventually run out of breath and use your arms and legs to reach the surface again. You know that's unlikely to happen if you're around anyone other than Rachel.

You nodded and ran your tongue over your lips, tasting a hint of an unfamiliar lip-balm.

"Is it all right if I stay here?" you ask, and you mean it for a lot longer than the night.

Rachel nodded. "Of course."

When you're both under the covers a few minutes later, you don't hesitate to lean in to her for more support. You knew she'd give you anything you needed. So, with your head on her shoulder and your arm slung over her midsection, you say it to her. Not to Rachel, you say it to the girl inside who lashes out in violence. It's quiet, barely audible over the sound of silence, but you feel it expel from your body and mind.

"Goodbye."

Rachel's hand rubbed your back. "What?"

"Goodnight," you whisper.

"Goodnight, Quinn."

You think you'll still be left in the fire next year, but maybe there's a chance that you won't be entirely engulfed in flames.


End file.
